Any suggestions for a player in CoT?

[AndyM]

Hi,

I am about to start playing Council of Theives after running Legacy of Fire and while I am good on 3.5 I ain't so hot on Pathfinder.

My gaming group doesn't have many 'forward' personalities so I will likely be either the loudest or second loudest player at the table (even if I try not to) and I will probably be pushed into being the 'group leader' role (The other 'talkative' players are the current GM for CoT and our previous GM for Rise of the Runelords).

Given this I have created a 1st level character as follows:
Human Paladin of Shelyn
Stats 15 point points buy
Str: 14
Dex: 10
Con: 12
Int: 13
Wis: 10
Cha: 16

Traits:
Magical Knack (+2 caster level for paladin class)
Shadow Child (Ignore miss chance for dim light)

Feats:
Expertise
Disarm

I plan on using heavy armour and a heavy flail. Smiting and killing really bad things and disarming and subdueing less bad things. Skill points spent on social skills and a bit of UMD.

Can anyone let me know if they have played/run for a similar character and how it got on/is getting on in the AP (no spoilers please)? Also if I have made any glaring or stupid build mistakes (or you have ideas/comments on the build I would be grateful) could you let me know?

Thanks

[Eric Mason 37]

I'm playing a fighter who trips in CoT. Tripping is a mixed bag, so power attack at level 3 would be a better investment than disarm IMO. Disarm will still be there at level 5, and it's not like you can't already trip people. Killing those who really need killing quickly however will always be important. Smites aren't unlimited ;)

Acting is a good skill for at least one of the people in your party to have. We had two, the fighter and the bard. If I were you I'd wait on the UMD in favour of perform (acting). (You might want to wait until you find a magical device or two before donating skill points to UMD at all.)

I'd probably go for a lower charisma, and bump up the constitution, but I am a cautious person who is used to getting hit a lot :)

[AndyM]

Ok, I had my first game session today.

Everything went quite well, except for having to change my name as another player wanted a letter 'D' name (To help avoid initiative confusion we try and all have different character initials).

Managed to disarm most of the bad guys we ran into with my flail and I only fell over once when I took a critical longsword blow.

Good start to the adventure all in all.